9/11... THE FALLING MAN

Submitted by SadInAmerica on Tue, 09/11/2012 - 3:01pm.

9/11 was one of the most pivotal events in world history. Its impact
will be felt for years to come. You owe it to yourself to go beyond the
sound bites and the simplified official story... This film is still not released in the United States. ~ Documentary

This is an extremely
complicated story with numerous players and motives. The 9/11
information doesn't all make sense or fit neatly together.

It's a story
full of espionage, deceit, and lies. If there are forces out there
tricking us, they can only succeed if we, the general public, remain
ignorant and passive.

"A few days after the falling man picture was published, Peter Cheney a
journalist from the Globe and Mail was asked to attempt to identify him.
He had the image enhanced and immediately saw that the man was black or
hispanic with a goatee and a waiter's jacket.

Cheney thought that he
might have jumped from Windows on the World restaurant which was crowded
with over 150 guests and staff at the time of the attack.

He began to look for one man among the thousands who were missing that
day. It seemed hopeless but late one night Cheney saw a photo near Times
Square of a missing man in a white jacket; Norberto Hernandez, a pastry
chef. His sister, Milangros had seen the photo and thought it might be
of her brother.

Cheney went to the funeral but the family refused to speak to him or
look at the picture. Deeply religious they could not face the thought
that their husband and father had chosen to end his life on that day.

"I
know what he was thinking, he was thinking of me, of his daughters, his
grandchildren and his mother. 'I'm not gonna jump, I'm going to try and
escape any way possible ... but the last thing I would do is jump out
of the window.'" his wife said later. Cheney went on to publish an
article where he identified Hernandez as the falling man.

Tom Junod, a writer for Esquire magazine was haunted by the photo and
convinced that America needed to confront the falling man and the others
who jumped to their death that day.

"I felt the falling man had been
pushed to the side, there was an element of exclusion that he died
improperly and that we want to remember this day for its heroism and
whether we think of the jumpers as heroic or not they should not be
excluded from the consecrated ground of American soil because they died
in a way that makes us uncomfortable."

In the spring of 2003 he began to
work on an article about it. "The falling man picture became the
picture that nobody wanted to look at." (Listen to an interview with Tom
Junod by NPR)

He contacted the photographer Richard Drew and discovered that there
were a total of twelve photos depicting the man's descent. Looking at
the sequence closely the falling man appeared more black than hispanic
and in the final frame his white shirt had blown off to reveal an orange
t-shirt.

Junod also learned that kitchen workers in New York wore
checked pants, not black ones like the man in the photo. He began to
suspect that Cheney had identified the wrong man.

He showed the photos to Norberto Hernandez's daughter Catherine who was
relieved to tell him that the photo was not of her father. Norberto had
never owned an orange t-shirt.

His widow Eulogia had prepared his
clothes for the day and they didn't match the photo of the man. Eulogia
begged Junod to clear her husband's name.

Junod began compiling a list of new possibilities and convinced the
former staff at Windows to look at the photos in July 2003. One of the
names on the list was Jonathan Briley a 43-year-old sound engineer who
worked in the audiovisual department at Windows.

Junod asked Michael Lomanco, the executive chef at Windows to look at
the photos. "My first reaction to the photographs was I didn't wanna see
them, I didn't wanna handle them, I didn't wanna participate in this."
But he did examine them closely.

"Jonathan fit the body type, the size,
colouration of the person in that photograph and it left the door open
for me that there was a possibility that it was really Jonathan. I
thought he was a terrific person...and I can only feel so bad for him
having to have to suffered the way he did."

Jonathan's sister Gwendolyn recalls, "When I first looked at the picture
it was almost like touching a hot stove. I looked at the figure and I
saw it was a man - tall, slim. I said, 'If I didn't know better that
could be Jonathan.'"

Jonathan Briley was identified by his younger brother Timothy in
September 2001. His body was found on the ground beside the remains of
the Trade Center.

Timothy recognized his brother by his hands and feet.
His clothes were destroyed but Timothy took one of his brother's shoes, a
black velcro tennis shoe, home with him. Jonathan's remains were
confirmed with DNA and dental analysis.

According to his family there is no record of Jonathan's last movements
that day. There were no phone calls or text messages. Although forensic
pathologists maintain that it's unusual for a body to fall 100 stories
in one piece, it's not impossible.

Jonathan Briley did wear an orange t-shirt. But his wife was asleep when
he left for work and can't confirm what clothes he had on that day. So
it can never be for certain if Briley is the falling man.

His sister Gwendolyn, "I never thought of the falling man as Jonathan, I
thought of him as a man that just took his life in his hands for just a
second. Did that person have so much faith that he knew that God would
catch him or was he afraid to experience the end up there?

I hope we're
not trying to figure out who he is and more to figure out who we are
through watching it."

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